http://studiodynamics.net/list/metamorph.avi 4MB Xvid
For What It's Worth :
Some issues discovered along the way while creating this project .
Problems came when attempting to create and then choreograph these
metaball objects .
Problem #1 - How to fill these font objects with metaballs ?
I couldn't find any way (easy or otherwise) of filling an
object with 'Analytical Spheres' . I'm sure the Javascript
people could come up with something or maybe even using lat-
tice mapping or magnetism ...
I fell back to Real V3.53 and used the 'Create/Particles/Volume'
on the included Tube Fonts , and then brought them into RS3D for
the cleaning up process . These were transformed into metaballs .
Problem #2 - You can't 'Morph' metaball objects . At least I could
not find any way to do so . Tried various workarounds and gave up .
Is this a bug , or me , or is it simply not possible ?
Problem #3 - Metaballs do not allow you to drop the underlying
'Analytical Spheres' to a Level . The metaballs were ~400 spheres
and life would have been much easier if I could have dropped each
of the fonts into it's own level inside the main (huge) metaball
object , but once you do that the metaball losses it's meta .
Problem #4 - How do we choreograph these 400 "particles" ? The
'Choreography Window' is certainly not designed to work with
particle clouds , and morphing doesn't work , so we have to use
the 'Animation Recording' method , which doesn't sound so bad at
first ... just turn on animation recording and move your meta-
ball objects around and then play it back and modify , right ?
Well , getting our initial keyframes was actually very easy ,
but adding more "in-between" keyframes was a chore and required
a workaround method . The problem was that as I moved away from
one keyframe and toward another one the object would "morph" as I
went . There were many times I would have preferred to be able
to move along the timeline without the object constantly chang-
ing on me .
The best way of working would have been the ability to "mould"
the object and then hit keyframe creator object that would ask
me what frame-number I wanted this key to be placed at , current
frame number , or otherwise .
For instance , I had a key at frame #99 that I wanted to be
placed at frame #200 , but unfortunately I already had several
keys between frame #99 and frame #200 . I couldn't just slide
that #99 key forward to #200 because there were keys in the way,
and if I just jumped to frame #200 I would loose the current
pose I had constructed since the object would morph as I moved
along the timeline .
The bottom line is that this drawback essentially made the
'Timeline' "linear" , when the preferred method of working has
and always will be , "non-linear" .
cheers
studio
